Synopses & Reviews
Since the early 1990s, while mainland Chinaandrsquo;s state-owned movie studios have struggled with financial and ideological constraints, an exciting alternative cinema has developed. Dubbed the andldquo;Urban Generation,andrdquo; this new cinema is driven by young filmmakers who emerged in the shadow of the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989. What unites diverse directors under the andldquo;Urban Generationandrdquo; rubric is their creative engagement with the wrenching economic and social transformations underway in China. Urban Generation filmmakers are vanguard interpreters of the confusion and anxiety triggered by the massive urbanization of contemporary China. This collection brings together some of the most recent original research on this emerging cinema and its relationship to Chinese society.
The contributors analyze the historical and social conditions that gave rise to the Urban Generation, its aesthetic innovation, and its ambivalent relationship to Chinaandrsquo;s mainstream film industry and the international film market. Focusing attention on the Urban Generationandrsquo;s sense of social urgency, its documentary impulses, and its representations of gender and sexuality, the contributors highlight the characters who populate this new urban cinemaandmdash;ordinary and marginalized city dwellers including aimless bohemians, petty thieves, prostitutes, postal workers, taxi drivers, migrant workersandmdash;and the fact that these andldquo;floating urban subjectsandrdquo; are often portrayed by non-professional actors. Some essays concentrate on specific films (such as Shower and Suzhou River) or filmmakers (including Jia Zhangke and Zhang Yuan), while others survey broader concerns. Together the thirteen essays in this collection give a multifaceted account of a significant, ongoing cinematic and cultural phenomenon.
Contributors. Chris Berry, Yomi Braester, Shuqin Cui, Linda Chiu-han Lai, Charles Leary, Sheldon H. Lu, Jason McGrath, Augusta Palmer, Bandeacute;randeacute;nice Reynaud, Yaohua Shi, Yingjin Zhang, Zhang Zhen, Xueping Zhong
Review
andldquo;An essential addition to contemporary Chinese film studies, this provocative collection of essays effectively describes the significant breaks that the most recent generations of filmmakers and media artists in the PRC have made both with the tradition of Chinese filmmaking and with the acclaimed, influential andlsquo;Fifth Generationandrsquo; that preceded them.andrdquo;andmdash;Richard Peandntilde;a, Program Director, Film Society of Lincoln Center, and Professor of Film Studies, Columbia University
Review
andldquo;Until the early 1990s, China struggled with modernity, with one step back for every step forward. But it produced a brilliant new cinema that attracted world attention, a national cinema skeptical of Chinaandrsquo;s ability to change. Since then, China has boomed, skyrocketed upward on the world scene like its new urban skyscrapers, traded in much of its andlsquo;Chinesenessandrsquo; for a leading role in an emerging global culture, and produced a new generation of independent, forward-looking andlsquo;urban cinema.andrsquo; Including thirteen essays about film and film culture in todayandrsquo;s China, this is the first volume to bring the newest Chinese cinema to life. It deserves to be read and then re-read.andrdquo;andmdash;Jerome Silbergeld, author of China into Film and Hitchcock with a Chinese Face
Review
andldquo;The Urban Generation offers a fascinating account. . . . This anthology of original research is essential to readers who aspire to stay updated with Chinese films and Chinese society. Furthermore, in linking textual analysis conceptually and methodologically to the contextual and the intertextual, it should also be interesting to students of film and cultural studies in general.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;This book is a remarkable achievement deserving a place on the bookshelves of all serious researchers of Chinese film and indeed world cinema. Any student of modern chinese culture can learn much from this important work. . . . Zhang makes a major contribution to Chinese and world film studies and to our broader understanding of twentieth-century Chinese social and cultural history.andrdquo;
Synopsis
An anthology that explores film works by the "urban generation,"--filmmakers who operate outside of "mainstream" (officially sanctioned) Chinese cinema -- whose impact has been enormous.
About the Author
Zhang Zhen is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at New York University. She is the author of An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896andndash;1937.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Bearing Witness: Chinese Urban Cinema in the Era of andldquo;Transformationandrdquo; (Zhuanxing) / Zhang Zhen 1
I. Ideology, Film Practice, and the Market
Rebel without a Cause? Chinaandrsquo;s New Urban Generation and Postsocialist Filmmaking / Yingjin Zhang 49
The Independent Cinema of Jia Zhangke: From Postsocialist Realism to a Transnational Aesthetic / Jason McGrath 81
Getting Real: Chinese Documentary, Chinese Postsocialism / Chris Berry 115
II. The Politics and Poetics of Urban Space
Tear down the City: Reconstructing Urban Space in Contemporary Chinese Popular Cinema and Avant-Garde Art / Sheldon H. Lu 137
Tracing the Cityandrsquo;s Scars: Demolition and the Limits of the Documentary Impulse in the New Urban Cinema / Yomi Braester 161
Scaling the Skyscraper: Images of Cosmopolitan Consumption in Street Angel (1937) and Beautiful New World (1998) / Augusta Palmer 181
Whither the Walker Goes: Spatial Practices and Negative Poetics in 1990s Chinese Urban Cinema / Linda Chiu-Han Lai 205
III. The Production of Desire and Identities
Ning Yingandrsquo;s Beijing Trilogy: Cinematic Configurations of Age, Class, and Sexuality / Shuqin Cui 241
Zhang Yuanandrsquo;s Imaginary Cities and the Theatricalization of the Chinese andldquo;Bastardsandrdquo; / Bandeacute;randeacute;nice Reynaud 264
Mr. Zhao On and Off the Screen: Male Desire and Its Discontent / Xueping Zhong 295
Maintaining Law and Order in the City: New Tales of the Peopleandrsquo;s Police / Yaohua Shi 316
Urban Dreamscape, Phantom Sisters, and the Identity of an Emergent Art Cinema / Zhang Zhen 344
Appendix: The Urban Generation Filmmakers (compiled by Charles Leary) 389
Bibliography 411
Contributors 429
Index 431